Three teams shortlisted in Patient Safety Awards | News

Patient safety is top of the Trust’s priority list, so we are excited to announce that three teams have been shortlisted in five categories of the Health Service Journal’s (HSJ) Patient Safety Awards 2021.

The successful teams include St Luke’s Cancer Centre and Pharmacy Team, the Glaucoma Monitoring Team and SCReaM Human Factors and Team Resource Management Programme.

It’s a double whammy for the St Luke’s and Pharmacy Team who were shortlisted in two categories for their safe delivery of anti-cancer treatment during the pandemic. The team is in the running for Patient Safety Team of the Year, as well as Improving Safety in Medicines Management Award.

Sally Seymour, Deputy Chief Pharmacist for Cancer, said: “At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we knew that we had to reduce the risks of Covid infections for our vulnerable patients receiving anti-cancer treatments. To do this, the St Luke’s Cancer Centre team and Pharmacy Department worked to provide remote consultations, drive-through services for medicine collection and home delivery of cancer medication. Our teams delivered these measures at pace, reducing the need for patients to attend St Luke’s, and making made it safer for those who had to come onsite for treatment”.

“The staff worked incredibly hard to achieve huge change and innovation so patients could continue to access treatment safely - it is great for this to be recognised in these awards.”

Dan Lindfield, Glaucoma Consultant, and his team have also been shortlisted in two categories - Deteriorating Patients and Rapid Response Initiative of the Year and the Patient Safety Pilot Project of the Year category. Dan set up a drive-through Glaucoma monitoring service in just two weeks in January 2021.

Glaucoma is a potentially blinding disease, which is often symptomless, and any sight loss is irreversible. Setting up a drive-through service allowed the team to measure eye pressure and monitor Glaucoma through a patient’s car window, using a high-tech portable machine.

Dan said: “It’s incredible to be shortlisted for such a prestigious national award. The success of our drive-through glaucoma service is testament to the hunger of our clinicians and managers to keep our patients safe despite adversity.

“It was a simple idea of ‘taking the clinic to the car park’ but the speed with which it was set up and the precision of delivery shows how adaptive our team is. Well done to everyone involved.”

Our third shortlisted team comprises Suzi Lomax, consultant anaesthetist, co-founder and project lead, and Jenny Sutcliffe, Chartered Ergonomist, and their SCReaM team who run the SCReaM Human Factors and Team Resource Management (HF &TRM) Programme.

Shortlisted in the Patient Safety Education and Training category, the programme has been developed to improve staff and patient safety and wellbeing by increasing the awareness, understanding and application of human factors (HF) in healthcare. This is done through training, HF projects and HF engineering.

Suzi said: “Absolutely delighted that the SCReaM HF and TRM programme has been recognised by the HSJ Awards and want to thank everyone who has been involved. Although established in other industries, the application of human factors in healthcare is still relatively new but has far-reaching potential for designing better systems for the human user – both in terms of staff and patients.

“Since it was set up in 2013, the programme has evolved dramatically and now has embedded rolling multidisciplinary training to ensure staff can maintain up-to-date knowledge and skills. Rapidly expanding to other areas across the trust, we regularly receive positive stories from staff about the benefits achieved in practical work situations.”

Congratulations to all three of our amazing teams for their innovative achievements and success so far. We wish you all the best for the next selection stage of the awards process on 2 August. Good luck.